FLAME and True Love
by westwingwolf
Summary: Annie likes to play games to determine her future.  Annie centric with mentions of Jeff/Annie and Jeff/Britta.  Spoilers up to 2x05.


Author's Note: I don't know how familiar people are with these games, so I tried to explain them but it might still be confusing. Anyways, the sad thing is I actually did the work for the results, and then I decided to write a fanfic around those results. I've reached new heights of lameness.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

As much as Annie liked people to treat her as an adult, she still enjoyed a few juvenile games. Not that anyone in her group of friends had room to talk about childish behavior anyway. Still, not many people know of her love for childhood fortune telling games. She once asked Abed to play MASH with her, but he said they had all ready played and called her "hot lips." She didn't ask again after that.

One of her favorite games is FLAME. She would take the name of her crush and cross out the letters the two of them had in common, then she would count the remaining letters to see if they would be "friends," "lovers," "adore," "married," or "enemies." Despite what she told Jeff and Britta, she wasn't over Jeff. She had thought he was gross before and still ended up making out with him. She had also wanted to renew her friendship with Britta, and so the excuse about kissing Jeff to be cool had come out to smooth over that bump in the road.

So yes, Annie still thought about Jeff romantically. And she played games to prove they were meant to be. Only apparently the games didn't know it. The answer she got was "adore." People adored kittens and sweaters. Adore was not a sexy term. Sure, the dictionary stated "adore" as an intense love, but when compared to "lovers" and "marriage" it felt lacking in substance. With those terms, at least a person knew where she stood. Jeff telling her he adored her wouldn't feel as good as telling her he loved her.

Trying to increase her chances, she counted the crossed out letters, but still all she got was "adore." And not that she would, but if she had cheated and crossed out all letters they had in common instead of letter for letter, then she would have gotten either "enemies" or "friends" depending on whether she counted the leftovers or the crossed out letters. To be fair, in the beginning of their relationship she could have been his enemy because she didn't really trust that he was a board certified tutor. They were on opposite sides when he wanted Troy to play football, and when she was writing her article about the dean. He even let the group think she had tattled about that horrible flag to Dean Pelton. And of course, they were certainly friends now. So the game wasn't wrong. It just wasn't the answer she wanted.

In the interest of keeping an eye on the competition, she paired Jeff and Britta's names. Not surprising, they also came up "friends" and "enemies" on two of the variations. Sadly, they also had "lovers" and "married." True, they were lovers. After that revealing study session, Annie told the dean the study room table had termites and needed to be burned to prevent spreading of the infestation. Jeff would have been proud of her deviousness.

Also true is that the group kept implying Britta and Jeff were the "mom and dad" of their circle. Maybe this could explain the "marriage" aspect of Jeff and Britta's relationship. But Annie definitely didn't think of Jeff as her dad because…ewww. She meant "dad" in the way dads are in charge, and Jeff is almost always in charge of them. Britta is the "mom" because she likes to take charge. If Annie wanted to be the mom, she could but she doubted anyone would listen to her unless it was about studying. Or unless she cried, but that didn't exactly say "strong mom" type.

What really bothered Annie was when she moved on to another game where she used the letters in their names to spell "True Love." She and Jeff only scored 55 percent. Jeff and Britta had 93 percent. So by the rules of the game, Jeff and Britta were more destined to belong together.

Maybe she was being a silly girl relying on a silly game to determine her future. But something in her life should go her way just once. It wasn't fair Britta had so many "R"s and "T"s in her name. It's not like Jeff 's name added anything more to his and Britta's percentage than it had to his and Annie's. Britta's name had done all the extra work. Had added twice as many letters as Jeff's had.

The more Annie thought about it, the more she could see the results working in her favor. Perhaps if Jeff and Britta were in a romantic relationship, Britta would be doing all the work, and Jeff would never change. He would never put in the effort that Britta would believe was fair. However, Jeff and Annie's names put in the same number of letters in "True Love." They were equals. Their percentage might never compare to Jeff and Britta's, but it would be fully shared. Which means so much more.

And one day, if Annie ever changed her last name to Winger, then that equality would remain. Plus their true love status would increase by ten percent. Britta would never change her name, and even if she did, they would lose twenty percent of their love and still never be equal.

Jeff had once told Annie the trick to being a good lawyer was perceiving what you wanted the truth to be and then making others believe it. Maybe names games were silly, but this gave her hope. With hope, she could believe it to be true, and then she could make Jeff believe it too. However, she wouldn't tell him about the games until much later. Like when she was teaching them to their children.

Just for fun, she tried pairing Abed and Troy's names. They came up "lovers"…twice.


End file.
